bug#60269: 30.0.50; recursive-edit not completed when buffer killed

bug#60269: 30.0.50; recursive-edit not completed when buffer killed

[Jean Louis]

When buffer of recursive edit is killed, recursive edit remains still
not finished, and expected outcome for me as user is that recursive edit
get aborted.

See reference by Gregory:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2022-12/msg02096.html

One can reproduce it with following procedure:

1. Invoke (read-string-from-buffer "Edit #1" "My string")

2. Press C-x k to kill the buffer

3. Observe in the modeline that there are square brackets indicating
   that recursive edit is still going on.

4. To finalize those ghost recursive edits one can press C-M-c

My expectation for C-x k is to abort recursive edit, and not keep
function in memory waiting for C-M-c

I am using many times recursive-edits to edit description, text, values
in the database. Video is here:
https://gnu.support/images/tmp/2022-12-23/2022-12-23-07:56:46.ogv

My actual program is following:

I have used back in time temporary files from console to edit database
values. But then a program would write string to temporary file, invoke
the editor, and know that editor finished its work, then program would
read the string back into the database from temporary file.

If I use Emacs to fetch database value, I could edit it nicely in the
same manner provided I use external editor. And that makes not much
sense.

For that reason I use recursive-edits. When recursive edit is finished,
the returning string is recorded in the database as recursive-edit
remains with the running function waiting for input. Recursive edit
buffer closes when finished, and that is signal that string is finished
and shall go into the database.

If I use ordinary file editing, it is unclear for invoking function when
is that editing really finished. Or maybe I should add hook and replace
buffer killing function C-x k with the function to load the saved file
of the buffer back into the database?

Any idea is appreciated.


In GNU Emacs 30.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, cairo
 version 1.17.6, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2022-12-22 built on
 protected.rcdrun.com
Repository revision: e98ab3f458b25812eff1b3a7ce6429caece4c891
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12101004
System Description: Parabola GNU/Linux-libre

Configured using:
 'configure --with-x-toolkit=lucid --with-mailutils'

Configured features:
ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG
JSON LCMS2 LIBOTF LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 M17N_FLT MODULES NOTIFY INOTIFY
PDUMPER PNG RSVG SECCOMP SOUND SQLITE3 THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS
TREE_SITTER WEBP X11 XAW3D XDBE XIM XINPUT2 XPM LUCID ZLIB

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $LANG: de_DE.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=exwm-xim
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  eldoc-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  indent-tabs-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message mailcap yank-media puny dired
dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg rfc6068
epg-config gnus-util text-property-search time-date subr-x mm-decode
mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader
cl-loaddefs cl-lib sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util
mail-prsvr mail-utils rmc iso-transl tooltip cconv eldoc paren electric
uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type elisp-mode mwheel
term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image
regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode lisp-mode
prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch easymenu
timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax font-core
term/tty-colors frame minibuffer nadvice seq simple cl-generic
indonesian philippine cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese
tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek
romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese
composite emoji-zwj charscript charprop case-table epa-hook
jka-cmpr-hook help abbrev obarray oclosure cl-preloaded button loaddefs
theme-loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp files window text-properties
overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget keymap
hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind inotify lcms2
dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting cairo x-toolkit
xinput2 x multi-tty make-network-process emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 16 38202 11784)
 (symbols 48 5194 0)
 (strings 32 14343 1994)
 (string-bytes 1 403121)
 (vectors 16 9488)
 (vector-slots 8 151810 12884)
 (floats 8 34 25)
 (intervals 56 252 0)
 (buffers 984 11))

--
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

bug#60269: 30.0.50; recursive-edit not completed when buffer killed

[Eli Zaretskii]

tags 60269 notabug wontfix
close 60269
thanks

> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2022 08:53:26 +0300
> 
> 
> When buffer of recursive edit is killed, recursive edit remains still
> not finished, and expected outcome for me as user is that recursive edit
> get aborted.

Sorry, no.  This is age-old Emacs behavior, and changing it now would
be unthinkable.  There's nothing wrong with multiple recursive-edit
levels, if one knows what they are doing, and absolutely no reason to
exit recursive-edit when some buffer is killed, because the
recursive-edit level is not a buffer-local notion, it affects the
global Emacs state.  There are commands in Emacs that deliberately
enter recursive-edit, and they will be broken by your proposal.

If you want to do this locally, you can define a kill-buffer-hook to
do that.

I'm closing this bug.

bug#60269: 30.0.50; recursive-edit not completed when buffer killed

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2022-12-23 11:34]:
> If you want to do this locally, you can define a kill-buffer-hook to
> do that.

Thanks, good reference to continue making it better.


--
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

bug#60269: 30.0.50; recursive-edit not completed when buffer killed

[Drew Adams]

> I am using many times recursive-edits to edit description, text, values
> in the database. ...
>
> When recursive edit is finished,
> the returning string is recorded in the database as recursive-edit
> remains with the running function waiting for input. Recursive edit
> buffer closes when finished, and that is signal that string is finished
> and shall go into the database.
> 
> If I use ordinary file editing, it is unclear for invoking function when
> is that editing really finished. Or maybe I should add hook and replace
> buffer killing function C-x k with the function to load the saved file
> of the buffer back into the database?
> 
> Any idea is appreciated.

You might want to try library `rec-edit.el':

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RecursiveEdit#rec-edit.el

It can make it more obvious when you're
in a recursive edit, which level, etc.

And you can use the same key, `C-M-c', to
exit a recursive edit and (with `C-u') to
enter one at the top level.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/rec-edit.el